Miracle
by Latest From The Asylum
Summary: The end of the world didn't find the Lightwoods unprepared. They would have likely survived to see a new world if it weren't for the deadweight they find in Clary Fray and Simon Lewis: two teens that have only dealt with zombies in video games. But fate works in strange ways and once paths cross, it is surprisingly hard to disentangle them. AU collab with DoctorTheTwitch


In the movies it always happens fast. One day the world is completely normal, full of people running late and picking up dry cleaning and getting married, but by the next sunrise it's a desolate wasteland crawling with the undead. That's not how reality works though. Things don't change overnight, but it sure feels like it to the survivors. And to those who don't survive...well, they don't feel anything.

It all started about two years Pre-Z, when a breakthrough in cancer treating technology was made by a California high school student*. After winning a 100,000 scholarship in a national competition looking to encourage talent and drive in scientifically inclined teens, she started working side-by-side with the top cancer researchers of the world to ready the cure for clinical trials. Funds were dumped into the promising project, the FDA approved human trials after only a few months of continually positive animal testing. For weeks the news was filled with the smiling, healthy faces of those preliminarily cured by the Miracle as it had come to be called. Children with growing hair and glowing faces spoke their thanks to the men and women who had worked so hard to give them back life.

The world was too happy to have found a bright spark amongst the bleak chaos of disease and depravity plaguing humanity to heed the calls that the cure was reached too quickly, that there could be devastating side effects not yet observed because of the dangerously rapid pace. Only a short year after it's first public appearance, Miracle was being distributed in leading cancer treatment centers around the world. The international medical community had never been stronger or more optimistic; with cancer defeated, it seemed like nothing was impossible anymore.

The first to be officially Cured was a little boy, 10 years old when he'd been diagnosed with Leukemia and 12 when he became the first Miracle child. He was 13 when he became the First walker. It started out as a simple flu: fever, aches, pains, chills, the works. Before 24 hours had passed little Nick Hartfeld was long gone, leaving a fired gun, a bloodstained wall, and a scarred family behind. The First was kept under wraps; neighbors were hushed and specialty teams called in to investigate what no one wanted to be real. Blood samples were analyzed but as other Miracles started breaking into fever they knew it was too late. After the first reported bites it was impossible to keep it a secret and panic flooded the previously joyous world. From there, the movies started looking a lot more like reality.

The militaries did the best they could to defend population centers, but barricades can only last so long. The U.S. as a whole held out for six weeks, watching in fear as the world was overtaken around them, but blockades usually keep more than just the threat out. Some cities starved to death before the walls could break, but for those that made it to that point, only the fastest made it out after. The first wave of survivors were the runners, the hiders, the previously paranoid, and the proud gun owners of America. Scratch that-the gun owners were too eager to shoot things and were too stupid to know not to take on a horde of walkers with a shotgun, no matter how proud you were of it. By eight weeks after the First, the government was a non-entity and survivors were on their own in a sea of the walking dead.

Among these survivors are a pair of teenagers, Simon and Clary, wandering the streets of New York.

This is where our story begins.

_*California high school student Angela Zhang exists and did research a cure for cancer for which she received $100,000 in scholarship money as the individual grand prize winner of the 2011 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. Obviously this possible cure has not been turned into a full fledged treatment as of now, and human trials are many years away. Angela Zhang did not create a cure for cancer that ended up bringing about the zombie apocalypse._

* * *

A/N: Hello! Yet another collab with my bff 4 lyf DoctorTheTwitch. Except this time, we actually have the chapters written up ahead of time, so we're less likely to drop off the face of the earth. HA.

Anyhow, this is our wondrous prologue. Your thoughts on this set up would be much appreciated in the reviews, if, you know, you want to help out. :D


End file.
